Quite simply, full-disc encryption means everything on your drive is safe and secure from being accessed by unauthorized people. Many people say they don’t use full-disk encryption tools because they think it’s expensive. Well, it’s not expensive at all. I have full-disk encryption that came included for free with my laptop. Some people also believe that security is very difficult to configure. No. Enabling full-disk encryption only adds about 45 seconds to your computer’s setup once the IT professional knows the procedure. It’s very easy.

Other people say once you use full-disk encryption, it becomes almost impossible for the end user to use the computer. That was true at one point, but today, if I want to lock my laptop, all I have to do is use the Windows L key combination and the computer locks, or I can just set the computer to lock automatically if I walk away for very long. Then whenever I want to get back in, I can take any one of my 10 fingers and swipe it across the fingerprint reader that is on the front of the laptop. Now I’m ready to go again and can access all the data on the system.

People also tell me that encryption is slow. It’s not. I use my laptop to run large and involved programs all the time, so I need speed. And I have overkill encryption on my machine just to prove to audiences how fast it is. I have my data locked or encrypted three different ways, and it only needs to be encrypted once. This is to demonstrate the speed.

So in a nutshell, full-disk encryption security is inexpensive, it’s easy for the user, it’s very important to have, and it’s easy for your IT administrators, too. So it’s time to be secure, and full-disk encryption is a great start to having some peace of mind.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Posted by Mike Foster on December 10th, 2007 in IT Security, Technology.

Tags: full-disc encryption security, IT encryption, IT Security, IT security procedures